Positive People in Pinecrest – Julia Rosenthal

Gulliver Prep junior Julia Rosenthal wants to be a doctor. Her father is a doctor, as are several members of her family, so you could make the case being a doctor is in her DNA.

She says she realized in eighth or ninth grade that being a doctor was her future. She’s still deciding what specialty to go into but right now she thinks she may want to become a surgeon.

Rosenthal also loves science, which she teaches to elementary and middle school children when they come for their monthly Breakaway Miami sessions at Gulliver.

Rosenthal has been in the Breakthrough Miami Club for two years. She signed up for the club after hearing about it from her friends. Breakthrough Miami’s goal is to motivate students from under-resourced communities to finish high school and go on to college.

One Saturday a month, the kids spend half a day at Gulliver learning science, language arts and other academic subjects in a fun way. She enjoys teaching the students.

“You can tell they thought it was going to be boring,” she says. “But when they saw it was cool and became engaged, it was cool to see you have an impact.”

On the Breakthrough Saturdays, the kids come in and they are given an overview of the lesson.

“Most of the time they do a lab,” she says.

After the lab is completed, they go through the conclusions.

Her community service includes volunteering to help organize Fit Kid’s Day in Pinecrest.

“They had activities to get kids to come outside and be healthy,” she says.

She worked on the event two years in a row and is waiting to volunteer again for the 2019 event.

At Gulliver, Rosenthal is in the National Honor Society, the Spanish National Honor Society and the Biomedical program.

“I’ve done it all three years,” she says. “It’s an elective class. We do mostly labs.”

The students also do dissections and learn about the body. This year, the curriculum is focused on viruses, bacterial infections and how to treat them.

“I just find it really interesting,” she says. “Learning about the different parts of the body and how everything works.”

She expects to take the biomedical class again her senior year. That class will require inventing a medical device that can help people.

Rosenthal is an athlete. She’s a competitive swimmer who swims for Gulliver’s varsity team and for the Gulliver swim club.

She competes in the breast stroke and butterfly. She’s good enough that she’s competed in the state championship meets.

“In ninth and tenth grade, I swam the 100 breaststroke,” she says. “My times have been improving in the butterfly.”

So, this year she competed in the butterfly.

Rosenthal hopes to swim varsity in college. If she can’t, she will continue swimming at the club level. She enjoys swimming.

“Hopefully on the varsity team,” she says. “If I couldn’t then I’d do it on the club team.”

Currently, the university of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins top her college list. She expects to take pre-med as her major.

Outside of school, Rosenthal volunteers at Beth Am during the High Holy Days.

“Over the holidays when they have services, parents send their kids to a program so they don’t have to sit through the long services,” she says. “I teach the kids about the holiday but in a fun way.”

This summer, she hopes to do volunteer work at a hospital—most likely Baptist.